Anisa Khalifa

You’re Taking a Walk on the Broadside. Welcome! I’m Anisa Khalifa. This tour is brought to you by The Broadside, a podcast about our home in North Carolina at the crossroads of the South. It's a weekly program from WUNC, Durham's Public Radio Station.

You're at stop number five out of five stops around town. Check all of them out on the map right below this audio player on your phone.

This story combines three pillars of Durham's history: tobacco, baseball and movies about baseball.

Jerad Walker

Every year, Durham Bulls Athletic Park welcomes hundreds of thousands of baseball fans. When each one of them enters the stadium, there's one thing that immediately grabs their attention. And you can sort of see it from the street right now too. Above the left field wall, there's a giant sign in the shape of a bull.

It's an iconic image that's been there for about 30 years, but the surprising history behind it goes back a lot further than that.

Miles Wolff

My name is Miles Wolff and I was the owner of the Durham Bulls from 1980 to 1991.

Jerad Walker

Because of that, Miles knows almost everything about this team. Especially the period in the late eighties when the classic baseball movie Bull Durham was filmed in town. Back then the city was abuzz and so was he.

Miles Wolff

At first it was exciting, “Oh, they're gonna make a movie here,” and everybody was excited. But I personally became frustrated 'cause movie people do things a lot different than minor league baseball.

Jerad Walker

Strange things like insisting on temporarily painting the old Durham Athletic Park green, even though the Bull's colors are blue, white, and orange.

Miles Wolff

I was thinking, “oh, these people don't know what they're doing.”

Jerad Walker

But he quickly changed his tune when director Ron Shelton consulted him about building a sign behind the outfield wall: a bull with red eyes that lit up. And the phrase: “hit bull, win steak” written on it.

Sound from Movie

Look at that, he hit the bull. Gotta get some free steak.

Jerad Walker

It was featured in an iconic scene in the movie. And when filming ended, Miles insisted that it stay put.

Miles Wolff

Well, it was such a great addition. We weren't about to tear it down.

Jerad Walker

So it sat there until 1995. That's when the bulls moved into the new stadium you see in front of you. Here, they built an even bigger version of it. And if you've never seen this beast in action, Tony Rigsby, the team's longtime in-stadium announcer is here to fill in the gaps.

Tony Riggsbee

Well, in its current incarnation what it does is when a Bulls player hits a home run, then the tail will start wagging, smoke will snort from the bull.

Jerad Walker

And on the rare occasion that a home run actually hits the sign, Tony says, the message written on it isn't a joke.

Tony Riggsbee

That Bulls player will win a steak from a local steakhouse.

Archival Tape

… Yu Chang down the left field side, this is towards the Bull. And it's tied! Chang's eating steak for dinner off the bull.

Jerad Walker

It’s happened 39 times since 1995.

But where did filmmaker Ron Shelton get the idea for such a strange thing in the first place? Well, there's one more curve ball in this story.

Right across the street from the stadium is the former American Tobacco Company manufacturing plant. One of their flagship products was called Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco. In 1912, to promote that brand, the company built giant bull signs inside baseball stadiums across the United States. And they handed out $50 prizes to any player that hit one.

Miles Wolff

I mean, that's where the word bullpen comes in. Is that used to be the pitchers would all warm up under these big bulls.

Jerad Walker

To Miles, this story was almost an urban legend, but a few years before the film Bull Durham came to town, he was at a game when an 89-year-old former minor league ball player approached him.

Miles Wolff

He gave me a picture of the 1913 Durham Bulls and in the picture they were sitting under this great big wood Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco sign that I had heard about, but never seen one of them.

Jerad Walker

And that is the image they used to model the sign in the movie and the one sitting in left field today.

Miles Wolff

You know, it's just a unique part of the Durham Bulls, and I love that it has the ties back to the Durham Bulls of 1913. It's an amazing story.

Anisa Khalifa

This story was made by Jared Walker, a regular voice on The Broadside, a podcast from WUNC about the culture, history, and interesting quirks of North Carolina. You can listen to our weekly episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts.

This project is made possible thanks to the support of Discover Durham.

You can check out more at wunc.org/walking.